Where to read?

I don’t really maintain this blog anymore, but it’s not because I am not writing. As the world has shifted more and more to platform-based content, I feel like posts on a personal blog really don’t get the same action as posts made on some of the other platforms. I’m also enjoying the flow of writing on some of these platforms, so please come join me there!

You can find me at Courtney Hoskins (captain pj) on Substack for the most current writing. Currently, I don’t do a lot that would require a paid subscription, but I am planning on offering some behind-the-scenes peaks and exclusive content once I get on a regular posting cadence.

Of course, if you want to support me with a paid subscription, I wouldn’t mind that either…

I have also written a bit on Medium, but I write less about filmmaking there. If you’re interested in my thoughts on parenthood or technology, you can find me at Courtney Hoskins (captain pj) on Medium

See you on the platform side!

Alienation Journal - 1

It begins. Or rather, it began. Months and months ago, actually. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I had been gearing up to shoot my coming-of-age feature “Going Geek” when COVID hit, effectively blowing up all of my plans. The movie takes place on a crowded college campus. It involves D&D, fraternity life, and kissing. You kind of need to shoot a movie like that NOT in a pandemic. I admit, I felt a little deflated. Okay, I felt a LOT deflated. I was devastated. There are so many obstacles to making a feature-length movie as it is. Over the past few years I have had the obstacles of single parenthood, the absolute horror of losing a sibling, financial ruin after being laid off during my maternity leave, and now, a pandemic? It’s hard not to feel especially picked on by the universe when the blows keep coming.

I let myself feel the pain and loss, but it wasn’t long before I started scheming again. Creativity loves constraints. At least mine does. The lockdown started me thinking about isolation and the trappings of social media as we all navigated this new reality. Then I saw a short story my kid wrote:

The seed of an idea had been planted. What struck me about this is that it is usually the other way around. A person thinks they see a UFO but it turns out to be a shooting star or some other explainable phenomenon. What if that weird cloud wasn’t a cloud after all? Or the shooting star you were making a wish on suddenly stopped and came right at you... All of these thoughts gelled together with this feeling of isolation and our hyper-dependence on our online connections and personas. 

“What if an influencer went on a solo hunt for UFOs? That would be filmable in a pandemic, wouldn’t it?”

Let me get one thing out of the way: I am not worried about sharing ideas with the world. To me, the notion that someone is going to “steal” your idea is a little silly. Based on that premise alone, I’m pretty confident that the movie you would make out of my “idea” would be completely different from the one I am making. In fact, I dare you. Would you go the horror route? Maybe a comedy? Go ahead and use my premise and we will compare our finished products. (Although... if you really like my premise and have the ability to make a movie, just call me. Seriously, I have already done all of the story work and am well into pre-production. It wasn’t easy, so spare yourself the trouble and just send some money over, take some credit, and call it a day.)

From that seed of an idea, a much more complex and complete story took root. I effectively stopped tending to my previous film and shifted to nurturing this one. So now, over a year later, here we are: a movie in full bloom. This is the film I wanted to make and I didn’t even know it. And it’s just the beginning.

I may be giving myself far too much work as I move forward with this project, but I have learned a lot so far. I’m sure I will learn a lot more. I’m hoping to document the process as I go.

Making Art in the Time of COVID

The Death of Normal

It’s October, 2019. I am co-producing a feature film, written and directed by a friend of mine. I don’t have time to do this, given I am a single parent with a full-time job, but I am doing it anyway. I make props, supply meals, buy special effects stuff, break down the script, shoot aerial footage, and do half a dozen other jobs that the title “indie movie producer” requires (basically, anything and everything one can).

I do this because I like the script and I like my friend and hey the credit is nice, but mostly I want the experience of seeing a feature-length film through from page to screen so that I am adequately prepared for producing and directing my own in the summer of 2020.

Shh. Don’t tell me. Let me stay here a bit.

I plan. I work. I fall in love with Studio Binder (seriously, use this). I book my kid for summer camps. I put aside vacation time. I start making my connections. I print out my script. I put “vibes” out to the world: hey, world! I’m shooting a feature film! Summer of 2020! In Boulder, Colorado! On a college campus!

Yeah. F**k.

So summer is done. My film is not. COVID is not. Wildfires are not. Politics and protests and unrest and financial ruin are not. These things continue to go on and on. They grind us down. And they are grinding particularly hard on collaborative people.

An early meeting with a potential co-producer ended with a very firm “no” from me (and some tears, if I’m being completely honest) when we were trying to figure out how we could possibly shoot this film right now. No, the actors can’t wear masks. No, proper social distancing is not realistic. No, we can’t change these big crowd scenes and shoot everyone in isolation. No, we can’t just “hope” or only hire people willing to take the risk. I believe in my art, but I do not believe my art is greater than any human life. One more time for the people in the back:

I believe in my art, but I do not believe my art is greater than any human life.

I didn’t enjoy making that decision, but I tried to keep my spirits up. I turned to the script. Every script always needs work. Always. I got feedback, entered contests, and started rewriting it. But that’s really as far as this project can go right now. I will continue to connect with others on the production side of things to keep the momentum going. I can’t realistically search for actors, plan for locations, or do most of the other things that come with actually making a film. And I am trying to be okay with this. I am trying to just… sit with it.

Not all of my co-creatives are able to do this, but I beg them: Please, Please try. Please be patient. Do not rush. The film I mentioned at the start of this blog is having a theatrical release against my advice and judgement. So many people will feel pressured to come out and see it to support their friends. So many of those people will then go back and mingle with others. I hope no one gets sick. Sure, the people attending may know the risks. Sure, they may be fine with it. But they are making this decision not just for themselves, but for everyone else they come in contact with.

There are stories of people getting sick at weddings or other events which have resulted in the deaths of people who WEREN’T EVEN THERE! There are already stories of cast and crew getting sick on set.

If empathy isn’t enough to persuade you, let me appeal to your ego: is this the production/release this project deserves? You may be able to bend the rules and get your project in the can or get your seventy-person theatrical screening, but is it worth it? Are you going to look back and think, “wow, this is awesome!” or are you going to think, “wow, it’s so weird that I made this rom-com where everyone is standing ten feet apart and we can’t hear the actors because the sound crew wasn’t willing to work…” Or even, do you want your big famous moment to be “the filmmaker that made all those people sick?”

For me, I know that returning to set right now would add tens of thousands of dollars to a budget I don’t have. Films that are doing it right have daily rapid COVID tests, ample supply of PPE, and are being shot in contained locations (and not, say, a college campus where my story takes place). They are also paying cast and crew solid wages (or should be) to remain as isolated as possible. I might be able to film some scenes in relative isolation and on a budget, but not knowing when I could get the remainder of them done and dragging cast and crew along for months just seems unrealistic.

I also know that it would be hard to have my head in the game and focus where focus is needed: ON THE STORY. Even without COVID, it’s hard for a director making a microbudget film to focus on what is really important when they are doing the job of ten people on set. Adding “nurse” and “germ cop” to that would only make it harder.

But have I given up? Oh hell no. While this particular production is on hold, I have turned my focus to “okay, well what can we do?” Turns out, it’s a lot.

Breaking down my script so production can hit the ground running

Confessions of a Geek Girl

I have something to tell you:

I was once three middle-aged men and a robot.

I could just leave it at that and let you fill in the “how the…” but I will elaborate.

I am a massive fan of The Venture Bros. “Obsessive nerd” may actually be a better descriptor. Back in 2009ish, an unofficial twitter fan account for Dean Venture became rather popular. My memory is not clear on the details of how everything unfolded from there. I had just moved to Los Angeles and was adjusting to a new life. It’s even possible that some of this all got started on one of the nights I had taken Ambien as that was a… thing… for a few months around the time of my move. Be wary of that drug is all I’m going to say on that subject. It’s a weird one.

Anyway, it turned out there was a group of people and they all wanted to start other role playing Venture Bros fan accounts and were looking for other players.

“Please tell me you need a Doctor Orpheus!”

“We do!”

And so it started. On Christmas night, I became Doctor O, hands down my favorite character on the show.

Drawn by me. At least partially. Then I passed out from Ambien. Man, I will never take that stuff again…

He’s a necromancer styled after Doctor Strange. His manner of speech is archaic and dramatic. He wields powerful magic and is often the only voice of reason in the Venture household. But he’s also a single dad in the midst of a midlife crisis and teased mercilessly by Dr. Venture, who for much of the show is his landlord. I took WAY too much pleasure crafting inane everyday tweets in his “voice.” Some examples:

ACCURSED 140 CHARACTER LIMIT! My ponderings shall not be contained by a mere arbitrary digital restriction!!

— Dr. Byron Orpheus (@Doctor_Orpheus) December 27, 2009

My Pumpkin has arrived for the blue moon celebration of the Gregorian New Year! But we still need milk. And the claw of a komodo dragon...

— Dr. Byron Orpheus (@Doctor_Orpheus) December 30, 2009

Did "sexy" vanish into the ethereal realm? And why must @jtimberlake bring it back? Is he a necromancer?

— Dr. Byron Orpheus (@Doctor_Orpheus) January 4, 2010

I could go on and on, or you could just go check out Doctor Orpheus on Twitter if you want more.

Eventually, the other Venture players and I revealed our real-life selves to one another over chat. I will not out my fellow players, but I was tickled that every single one of us was female. I’m still good virtual friends with some of them and hope we can meet in the real world some day.

We divvied out some of the other roles. Soon I became Hunter Gathers, another favorite. He (and sometimes she) is an agent of various clandestine groups on the show. His mannerisms are 100% Hunter S. Thompson as an action spy. Another voice to play with.

Some think twitter's about being nice & holding hands. WELL IT'S NOT, DAMN YOU! It's about following & being followed. INTELLIGENCE STUFF!

— Col Hunter Gathers (@ColGathers) January 9, 2010

What's a lolcat, dammit? And why is it saying "IM IN UR INTELLIGENCE, SELLIN ALL UR SECRETS!?"

— Col Hunter Gathers (@ColGathers) January 11, 2010

Damn you, @Doctor_Orpheus you Gothic, mossback specter wrangler! I WAS TALKING ABOUT C-4!! I just saved @RustyAdventurer's life!

— Col Hunter Gathers (@ColGathers) June 24, 2010

As you can see, we all started “conversing” with one another on Twitter. Sometimes “accidentally.” Doctor O tweeted out his “phone number” once- a google voice number I had purchased only to make a voicemail message to see how many people would call. Quite a few did. We created story lines and it was fun tweeting to friends who were fans of the show and who had absolutely no idea I was behind the accounts. Tweeting conversations with yourself is an interesting experience.

Eventually, I added Brock Samson to my repertoire (though there were a few of us tweeting as him and I couldn’t keep us straight after a while). This had an extra layer of geek fun to it as I once worked with Patrick Warburton on a short film. Yes, it was super cool. Imagine him looking up at you and with that voice saying, “I feel like I’m gonna throw up.” (I was the script supervisor and we maybe overdid it a bit with the fog machines…)

Guy at the coffee shop is kinda pissin' me off. Might have to get some "practical" practice in before my Krav Maga training...

— Brock Samson (@B_rockOn) February 22, 2010

AW THAT'S IT!!! Guy just spilled his mocha on my ONLY CLEAN SHIRT!!

— Brock Samson (@B_rockOn) February 22, 2010

Dammit! Now there's blood AND mocha on my only clean shirt! Hey @ColGathers we got that washer hookup at SPHINX yet?

— Brock Samson (@B_rockOn) February 22, 2010

Etc. I was taking the whole thing very seriously (and having way too much fun doing it). Soon, Doctor Orpheus had more Twitter followers than my personal Twitter account. Sadly, the characters have been pretty quiet for the past few years and most of their followers have vanished. The account interactions are no longer reflective of how popular these characters were back then. Ah, digital. The whole thing was a wonderful writing/improv exercise, though. I got to play with different voices in specific situations. Eventually, I took up a bigger challenge: tweeting as the non-human H.E.L.P.eR. robot.

4e6f 74 2066 65656c 69 6e67 20 77 65 6c6c2e 2057 68 61 74206973 20 74 6869 73 20676f 6f 20 6f6e 20 6d 79 20 7072 6f 63 6573 736f 72 3f

— H.E.L.P.eR. (@HELPeR_Bot) April 2, 2010

@J_Blownapart (¬_¬)

— H.E.L.P.eR. (@HELPeR_Bot) January 9, 2010

67 69 76 65 20 69 74 20 74 6f 20 74 6865 20 70 65 6f 70 6c6520 79 6f 75 20 6c 6f76 65 2e 0d 0a 2d 2d20 4d 61 79 6120 41 6e 67 65 6c 6f 75 20

— H.E.L.P.eR. (@HELPeR_Bot) January 12, 2010

…what? H.E.L.P.eR. doesn’t actually speak on the show. At least, he doesn’t speak English. His character posed more of a technical question of “how do I capture his voice” than a writerly one. My solution? H.E.L.P.eR. speaks in hexadecimal and kaomoji. Here’s a translator (the one on his profile doesn’t link to anything anymore and I kind of lost half of these accounts’ login info).

This was a fun way to pass the time between extras and temp/contract web developing gigs. Eventually, though, life took over and I had no more time to devote to this little Twitter world (and figured I should probably start focusing on my other writing). I miss this side of the Internet, though. If it’s still there, it’s damn hard to find amidst all of the conspiracy theories and online political “news” screaming.

Now, I know some of you are wondering is this legal? As far as I know, since we were all parody accounts, yes. We never claimed to be affiliated with the show and stated so regularly. I mean, I guess I will find out, now that I have outted myself here. Though, I outted myself to one of the show’s producers/writers long ago at Comic-Con and wasn’t immediately arrested. We ran into Doc Hammer and I fessed up to him. He was actually tickled and dying to know how I did H.E.L.P.eR. He told me his dialog is always fun to try to write in a script.

I’m actually writing this in honor of that convention. I haven’t been since I had a kid. The logistics and costs of going to a giant convention with a young one who might need to be wheeled to a nearby hotel for a nap mid-day made such an adventure pretty much impossible. Not to mention the fact that the “nerd flu” that circulates around the halls is bad enough in a non-COVID year. This year, I was finally able to afford it and felt the little one was old enough to appreciate it. Alas.

Black Lives Matter

I was on my way to Los Angeles with my three-year-old sleeping in the back seat of my car. I’d had a taillight out for a while and hadn’t gotten around to replacing it. We were running behind schedule. I pulled up to a red light and a police car pulled up behind me.

“Oh no,” I thought. “That cop is going to see my burned out light and pull me over and we might be late for our flight!”

Then another voice chimed in. “Check your privilege,” it said.

I had been listening to the audiobook “Rest In Power: The Trayvon Martin Story.” I’d also recently read “The Hate U Give.” In both of those books, the authors discuss the hard conversations black parents have to have with their kids- the scripts I never even knew existed for what to do if a cop unfairly profiles you or pulls you over for no reason. The moment I thought “I might miss my flight,” I realized that I have never once been afraid of the police. Annoyed, bothered, feeling “unfairly” ticketed… maybe? But not once had the thought “I might lose my life” crossed my mind in any encounter with police. Suddenly, the concept of “white privilege” became clearer for me when… nothing happened. No police lights. No sirens. No ticket. No backup. Just a free pass to continue heading to the airport for my vacation with a burnt-out taillight. Privilege.

Right now, I am reading “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo and “How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi. I highly recommend them, especially if as a white person you’ve ever found yourself saying “but all lives matter,” or “why should I feel bad, I’m not a racist!” or calling into question what exactly a CHILD was doing before police officers twice her size felt justified in throwing her to the curb or shooting him…

And if you are a person who dismisses the white supremacy movement currently underway in this country, I highly recommend reading “Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist.” This isn’t just “a few bad apples” or some minority “fringe” group being stupid and hateful on the Internet. This is a serious problem that is costing human lives.

I need to do better. I’m trying to figure out what the hell that is right now. I’m donating money, trying to amplify and promote non-white voices, having tough conversations with my son, reading and doing deep work on myself, including asking “is this blog post actually helping?” I don’t even know. I’m just feeling desperate and sad and I want to scream or cry or both.

Listen, read, learn, help, love, change.

To Boldly Go Where No Pop Culture Icon Has Gone Before

A story in honor of the premiere of “Picard:”

Because I work in a field that is tangentially related to the comic arts, I qualify for a “professional” badge for San Diego Comic-Con. Ten years ago, when this story takes place, that meant I got to go for free AND that I got to bring a couple of friends (I’m not sure what it means these days because it’s costing me a ton to go this year). Up until that year, I had gone to Comic-Con by my lonesome.

Y’all, it’s WAY more fun with friends! This particular year I went with my friends Brad and Travis. We got a cheap hotel on the shuttle line and geeked out for four solid days. Having partners in crime meant I didn’t have to go to parties or dinners by myself. Which I just don’t even do. It also meant I got introduced to things I never knew about as my friends squealed when they saw a thing or person they loved.

Most meals at Comic-Con are eaten while standing in a line or wandering around the main hall, hunched over and protective like a squirrel because there is no room for your elbows to lift your sandwich to your mouth (and you aren’t supposed to have one in the first place). Occasionally, though, it’s nice to go out for a fancy meal. So we did. We went to Nobu.

Me, moments before “the incident.”

This was about the time San Diego Comic-Con was shifting from a nerd fest to a place where people try to “mingle” with stars and producers. RIP, but it’s still fun and there are plenty of other Cons that can serve your geeky needs. While there were plenty of people like us in our fandom t-shirts (mine was Slusho that year- see pic) or costumes, there were also people in fancy dresses and slicked-back hair, scoping the place out.

And then there was this one guy sitting next to me.

We had just finished our meal- miso cod, oh my god- and were trying to decide what to do for dessert. Brad asked the question:

“So do we want to grab something here or do we want to go back to Ghirardelli and get some oh my god Patrick Stewart just sat down next to you.”

Blink blink. “Huh?”

Travis was as confused as I was. “What? Where?”

Brad clarified. “Look at Courtney. Now look next to Courtney.”

I stole a quick glance. Nah. Couldn’t be him. How could PATRICK STEWART just walk through the doors of a busy restaurant at a pop culture convention and get all the way to the middle of the restaurant without being tackled by rabid fans? And how could he be sitting next to ME?

“That’s not him,” I whispered.

“YES IT IS!” They both shot back.

Then a server came over. “Can I get you something to drink?”

The responding voice was unmistakable: “I’ll have a vodka tonic.”

That. Was Patrick Stewart. It’s too bad this isn’t a video post because I actually do a spot-on impression of him ordering said drink…

Needless to say, we ordered ice cream. I mean, obviously I wanted to remain in his orbit as long as I could (also, fancy green tea ice cream), but I was genuinely curious what he was doing all by himself in this busy, trendy restaurant and kind of wanted to see how this would all play out. Our server put a “reserved” tent on our table and I was just about to ask Sir Patrick Stewart if he needed us to move when another server came to “collect” him.

“Your party is right this way.”

He got up quickly and I realized he was probably just as curious as I was about how he wasn’t being harassed to death and ready to get out of the crowd. Also probably anxious to get far away from the weird girl in the Slusho shirt and her friends who were very obviously tittering and staring at him and failing at pretending not to.

She led him to a room. I saw his face light up as he recognized the people within (which in my nerd mind was probably the rest of cast of TNG) and we hopped off to another impromptu party with a story to tell.

Years later, Brent Spiner would ask me for a Slusho and Marina Sirtis would inquire about my art, but those are stories for another post…

JavaScript: The Missing Reality Check

This week’s blog post is on Medium: JavaScript: The Missing Reality Check

It’s a satirical piece that planted itself into my head after a friend told me I should write such a book, that there was a publisher who would be interested in paying me for such a thing, and then promptly vanished off the face of the Earth, leaving me with ideas that had no home. If you’ve ever tried to learn a programming language from a book, this should feel very familiar to you…

2020

Hello, long-neglected blog. I have missed you. Today is the first day of 2020. I have two resolutions for this year (decade, really, as long as you aren’t one of those “there-is-no-year-zero-and-the-decade-starts-with-2021” die-hards): write more and carbon footprint less. As you can clearly read from my second resolution, the first is in dire need of attention.

That’s not actually true, though. The truth is I write a lot. I write every day. Verbizing nouns is just one of those things we do nowadays because Internet (the last two words being the title of an enlightening book I am currently reading). The problem with my writing, however, is that I am the only one who ever reads it. I write daily on a site called 750 Words, I belong to a supportive writing network and participate in writing sprints as often as I can, I get semi-regular coaching sessions from the amazing Jenna Avery and Erin Stegeman, I work on my screenplays, novels, short stories, etc. just a little bit every day... But no one READS these things because I don’t actually put them out there. Also because no one reads screenplays except other screenwriters and the people actually making the movie. Seriously, when was the last time you heard someone say “I just read the most INCREDIBLE screenplay for a movie that no one has made and probably never will because it would be too expensive and has nothing to do with existing IP!”

(Don’t answer that question if you work as a Hollywood assistant... I’m trying to make a point here.)

So aside from occasionally publishing a short story or submitting a screenplay to a contest, my writing stays stuck in the database bowels of a website or in my writing journal. Both of which I am sure will be hacked and/or stolen someday, but are INTENDED to be private. Meanwhile, I pay monthly to maintain this website and then ignore it about 300 days of the year.

Part of this neglect stems from the fact that I am a single parent. You think my website is an un-maintained mess? Stop by my house on any given weekday and this site will feel like a well-oiled machine. Most of it stems from that place familiar to all creative people: fear. Fear of rejection, fear of ridicule, fear of being ignored, fear of drawing too much attention, fear of being too honest, fear of not being honest enough... I’m going to address that fear right here on this blog, though. As often as I can, I am just going to hit the “publish” button after my hour-long writing sprint is up. I’m not going to examine every word and edit the post to death, I’m just going to try to stay conversational, verbed words included. That split infinitive up there? I’m going to ignore it and publish anyway.

So that takes care of resolution number one. What about resolution number two? Reducing one’s carbon footprint in the light of the climate crisis can seem like an impossible task. Even more so when we read about how statistically the changes an individual makes to their daily lifestyle do little to offset the extreme damage being done by manufacturers and oil companies.

That doesn’t mean we get carte blanche to ignore our behavior and wreck our shared home. On top of that, our collective voices and behaviors are, in fact, pushing corporations to make changes. It seems like every auto company has released or is working on an electric car. Businesses are shifting to using more environmentally-friendly packaging and being more transparent about their environmental impact (partly because they are being sued and called out- I support all kinds of groups that speak to this kind of advocacy. Maybe that can be a future blog post). So my goal this year is to share the little actions I am taking to being a better Earth tenant.

So here’s to 2020! Here’s to making change and facing fears. Here’s to dusting off neglected things. Here’s to dancing like no one or anyone or everyone is watching.

Time

Time has been toying with me lately. My son just turned six. I worked for hours on this How to Train Your Dragon cake that glows under black lights. I love making his cakes and tend to go a little… overboard with them.

Baking is such a meditative process and birthdays often trigger reflections on time, but the events that followed this particular milestone pushed me deeper into the mirror…

Twenty years ago, I was living in Paris. I had never lived outside of Colorado before and the leap was a big one for a young adult. I had been determined to make study abroad part of my college experience and since my major (to even my own surprise) was French, Paris seemed like the obvious choice.

I had ulterior motives as well. I really wanted to major in film studies, but I always felt out of place in the film studies department at the University of Colorado. Not only that, it’s an expensive major and it seemed to me that if I was clever enough, I could get the education and experience without the price tag.

So here I was, in Paris, about to embark upon writing an honors thesis about the films of François Truffaut, determined to find a way to get myself into the Cannes Film Festival (which I eventually did), living in a city full of history and wonder, and floating around without an anchor while foreign sounds, sights, and smells overwhelmed me.

In the movie French Kiss, there’s a gag about Meg Ryan’s character never getting to see the Eiffel Tower. It’s there, behind her, but when she turns her head, it disappears behind a building or a moving car or something. I felt a bit like that for the first few days. I knew that somewhere in the city, there was an Eiffel Tower, an Arc de Triomphe, a Louvre, but I wasn’t seeing any of them, just a blur of wet pavement and murmurs of French that sounded unlike anything I’d heard in my classrooms.

One evening, I went out for dinner with a group of students. After dinner, we wound our way through the Parisian streets and visited Shakespeare and Company. As a bibliophile, I’d found heaven. I ran my hands across the stacks of books and the idea “Paris” began solidifying around me, but still seemed somehow out of reach.

We left the bookstore and made our way to a bridge. I had somehow made my way to Shakespeare and Company in blindness, with my nose stuck in my little “l’indespensable” red book, terrified of getting lost and not knowing how to get back to the hostel (this was long before google maps).

I remember turning my head and seeing it: Notre Dame de Paris, a giant piece of history just sitting patiently in the dark. The cathedral was dimly lit, adding to its gothic splendor. It was awesome in every sense of the word. I couldn’t move. None of us could.

Notre Dame was closed for the night, but we walked up to it anyway. I remember putting my hand on the 800-year-old stone and thinking about the history those stones had seen. Suddenly, Paris came to life all around me. I knew where I was.

Then, two weeks ago, I watched it burn.

At first, I dismissed the news. A fire breaking out at Notre Dame seemed like something easy to contain. Stone can’t catch fire, after all. Without reading the details, I had assumed that one of the thousands of little candles lit by visitors for their favorite saints had tipped over (Jeanne D’Arc, perhaps, as an act of revenge). And surely they had people standing by with fire extinguishers or something in such a case? As the alerts kept coming in, however, I resigned to turn on the news.

My heart broke seeing the spire collapse and hearing that some of the stained glass windows had been destroyed. I kept saying to myself that this building had survived revolutions, plagues, world wars, protests. Of course it would survive this. My mind flew back in time to that moment when I placed my hands on the stones and began my transformation from suburban teenager to adult person on the timeline of humanity. How much has changed since that night?

Photo credit: AP

A few days later, I drove my son to school. When we arrived, the parking lot was empty. The gates were locked, the usual sound of children playing outside before the start of the school day eerily absent. I pulled out my phone to find it was still in airplane mode. I switched it on to check the school calendar- had I forgotten about some holiday?

A backlog of text message alerts flooded my screen. All of the schools in Boulder County were closed due to a hunt for some woman who had been obsessed with the Columbine massacre. She was currently running around somewhere in the state with a gun she had purchased after hopping off a plane and passing a quick background check.

Again, my mind flew back 20 years. Again, I was in France on the same trip. My boyfriend had come out to visit over spring break and we rented a car to drive around Northern France (so American). As we were driving through the rain and listening to the radio, a news break interrupted. I still wasn’t completely fluent in French, but I picked up on the words “Littleton, Colorado.”

By design, Littleton is not a place that should be in the news. Ever. Like my hometown of Arvada, it’s a bland Colorado suburb, designed to feel boringly safe, though perhaps a little more on the upper class side of town. How on Earth did it land itself on the news here in France?

I stopped the car so I could really focus on the words and translate them. I felt numb. The windshield wipers tried their best to keep up as the rain poured down in torrents, visually distorting the upended world around me. The remainder of my stay in France consisted of conversations I didn’t want to have in both French and English and involved a good deal of defending the “crazy” United States. So in answer to my above question: how much has changed in twenty years? In this regard, not a whole damn lot. At least not where school shootings are concerned. To this day, shooters still reference Columbine as their “inspiration” for their horrible acts. At least this would-be shooter eventually took her own life before taking any others.

A day or two after hearing that news, I got a phone call from a friend: Phil Solomon had died. And yet again, my mind flew back twenty years to the start of a strange friendship.

After I returned home from France, I had been called in for a sort of emergency favor. I had filled in as projectionist for a class I took with Stan Brakhage the semester before my study abroad. Stan and I became friends (which is partly how I ended up in Cannes on that study abroad trip… a long story for another post) and before I knew it, I was considered a trusted 16mm film projectionist. I also started projecting films for Melinda Barlow, who served as my film studies thesis advisor while I was in France. Remember how I said I didn’t want to go broke receiving an education in film studies? Well, now I was getting paid for it. From my darkened vantage in the projection booth, I listened to the hypnotic whir of the projector while watching the classics and listening to world-class discussions of the topic. All while never having to write a single essay…

Back to the favor: Phil Solomon’s films were playing at the Denver International Film Festival. The festival was apparently required to use union projectionists. Apparently, not a single one of them had clearance to operate the 16mm projector. Could I swing by and do it? I didn’t hesitate to say yes, though I really didn’t know anything about him.

I arrived at the festival and immediately regretted my decision. The 16mm projector was huge. I was used to working with something small enough to carry. This projector was bigger than me. I took a deep breath and a closer look. I could do this. The principles were still the same: film strip follows the channels, light shines through film strip, image appears on screen. Easy peasy.

Five minutes into the screening, the projectionist burst through the door. “Stop the projector!” He screamed. He ran over to me and started gesticulating wildly at the projector. “The film is melting!” My initial panic faded to amusement. I grinned. “It’s an experimental film,” I explained.

Blink. Blink.

“It’s kind of supposed to look like it’s melting.”

He calmed down and pulled up a chair. We watched the remainder of the program in silence.

“Wow,” he said after the lights came up. “That was somethin’!”

Indeed it was.

Unfortunately, Phil was quite ill and I didn’t really get a chance to speak to him immediately after. When I finally told him the story, he laughed. Again, I had made a friend.

Before long, I was projecting films for Phil’s classes as well. Once I had officially graduated from CU, though, I had decided it was time to move on. Paris had planted the big city bug in my head and Boulder, Colorado, just wasn’t cutting it anymore. I had made a list of places I wanted to live. Paris and Los Angeles were at the top. Paris was unrealistic and my fiancé would rather have died than move to “cultureless” L.A., so we packed up and headed to New York City.

In the three years I lived there, I managed to (somehow) make a name for myself as an experimental filmmaker while working as an optical printer at a film lab. A handful of experimental films, dozens of film festivals around the world…

Then 9/11 happened.

Then Stan Brakhage died.

Then a divorce.

Like I said… time is weird.

After I left New York and with Stan gone, I had a hard time feeling like I belonged in the world of experimental film. Many of the people whom I considered “colleagues” considered me “a kid” or “their student,” despite the fact that I never actually took any of their classes. I grew further apart from the herd and started questioning if I wanted to continue down that path. I never felt like I was good enough to fit in with that group. I had no MFA, my films were not particularly intellectual, I had no aspirations to ensconce myself in the world of academia, and on and on. With cinema as visual art now firmly rooted in my mind and narrative in my heart, I turned away from the world I knew and packed my bags for Los Angeles.

In the years that followed, I fell so far out of touch with that world. When I went to Phil’s memorial screening at the University of Colorado, I felt like I didn’t belong. So many familiar faces, so many strange ones. Many of them hadn’t changed a bit in the twenty years that had passed. I felt envious of that sort of certainty and tenacity. As some of the speeches praised those who resist the film industry, I felt like a sellout. Like a betrayer. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run. Fortunately, I had a friend with me who felt the same way. After the screening, the two of us talked for hours as we walked through the campus where so much had started. We walked. We talked. We reflected. There. With my very patient son. My six-year-old.

Two decades. So much time.

Reawakening

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had a portal in her basement. During the daylight hours, it looked like a watercolor painting of a kite that she had made with masking tape in kindergarten, but she knew better. At night, she could go down to the basement and crawl through the diamond-shaped portal that opened only for her. That's where she visited the Other Life.

The Other Life was where her unicorns and dragons lived. Usually, her trips to the Other Life were all about fulfilling her responsibilities to her creatures. Unicorns and dragons eat a lot, after all. They also need a lot of exercise. And boy, do those unicorns demand grooming! Occasionally, a unicorn or a baby dragon would run off. She'd have to climb on the back of a dragon and search for the lost creature. These visits were the most fun.

Once, a volcano threatened her Other Life ranch. She had to relocate dozens of frightened unicorns and dragons that night. Her parents asked her why she looked so tired the next morning. She made up something about a bad dream.

One dragon often came back through the portal with her. He was the only one on her ranch with the ability to be invisible. He often got her into trouble- eating food in the school cafeteria or flying her up to the top of the monkey bars and getting too distracted to fly her back down (that happened more than once- dragons have short attention spans).

Of course, she tried not to talk about her dragon. No one would believe her anyway. None of the adults, anyway. Even some of the other children would tease her about her "imaginary friend." Didn't they know? He wasn't a friend, he was a pet. He was family. And he wasn't imaginary, he was invisible. BIG difference. 

As she got older, she realized she had to leave this world behind. She'd still tell stories and write about adventures, but This Life would pull on her harder than the Other Life. More and more, the Other Life was pushed to the back of her mind, only to make appearances in dreams or as passing thoughts while stuck in LA traffic jams listening to trippy music.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the girl is me. As I have grown older, I have been faced with challenges that have required me to leave the world of fantasy and makebelieve. I haven't left it entirely, but I have had to quiet it. Dragons and unicorns and space travel are "escapism." Reality is all about survival and paying rent.

Lately, "survival and paying rent" have thrown me deep into the world of web and applications development. JavaScript, in particular, has been using up what feels to be about 80% of my brain power. I build applications with it during the daytime hours and teach it in the evening. As a single parent, it's nice to know I have the skills to make enough money to keep us afloat.

Occasionally, I have excuses to indulge in escapism. I try to close my laptop and play with my five-year-old whenever I get the chance. He so wholeheartedly believes the floor is hot lava or that we are the Teen Titans that he will cry if I step on on the ground, worried I will burn my feet, or call me out if I accidentally switch from being Raven to being Mom.

His world is inspiring. He sees so much that I do not, but I remember. I remember how vividly I saw my unicorns and dragons. Well, except for the invisible one. I only heard him, but I knew he was there. I digress. 

A couple of nights ago, I turned his lights out after story time. My usual habit is to stay by his bedside for a while reading a book on my iPhone. This night, he protested.

"Mom, you're always working," he told me. I jumped a little. I thought he was already asleep.

"I am?" I answered.

"Yeah. You are always on your computer and then you are on your phone to check your mail and stuff and you shouldn't work so much."

"Oh. Do you want me to turn my phone off?"

"Yeah. And then come in my bed and snuggle me?"

I did what he asked. I doubt I will be getting these requests in a few years and I want to take advantage of them while I can.

I think it's important to note that he didn't scold me for "working too much" when I was making my short film a few weeks ago. Even when I had to leave him for a whole day to get some tricky shots on the coast, he seemed cheerful about it. It's like he knew that was a different kind of "work." And it is.

Reality work tenses me. My back hurts. My neck and shoulders hurt. Some nights I have headaches from staring at my screen for too long. And worst of all, my brain hurts.

The night of the "you work too much" warning from my five-year-old, I returned to my bedroom after he was asleep. I tapped open a digital book about teaching React to JavaScript newcomers and passed out midway through a sentence (note: coding books are wonderful insomnia treatments).

It's been like this since about two weeks into my maternity leave (over five years ago). As a newly single parent who was freshly laid off (thank you, Fox Broadcasting), panic mode kicked in. I researched everything I needed to make myself competitive in the world of development. 

I read books, took online courses, built sample projects, applied for all the jobs, took contracting positions and freelancing gigs, wrangling both doing the work and getting money from various clients after the work was completed. I stuffed my head full of angular, react, WordPress, laravel, web standards, whiteboarding, git, all the things a person needs to be a "rockstar developer." And still, the doors stay closed.

The dislike of moms in this industry is palpable. A lot has been said on this subject and that is not the point of this post, but I can feel it. 

"We would like you to speak on our panel on women in tech," one emailer proclaimed.

"Great!" I replied, "I will bring my four-month-old with me! He's tiny. He will just sleep in his baby wrap." I thought it would be a great visual and message. Like that image of Licia Ronzulli wearing her baby to a European parliamentary session?

"I'm sorry. We can't accommodate that. And it sounds like you have your hands full! So we will search for another speaker. Take care!"

Not even a suggestion of finding a sitter.

"Oh! We thought you were a man!" was how one interview started out when I walked into the room. I guess "over ten years experience as a front end developer" just screams male? I do know male Courtneys, but I still thought it was a strange assumption (and an even stranger thing to blurt out upon meeting someone).

After years of being told I am not a good "culture fit" for this company or that team or for being told my skills are not up to the level they require, I'm beginning to feel a big fat NO to the question of "should I continue trying to level up on this path?"

There are definitely benefits to doing this type of work. Work from home opportunities do exist. I have friends who tell me how "lucky" I am to be able to do this kind of work ("luck" has nothing to do with this, my friends- it has been a difficult and challenging path to get to this level). I do enjoy solving problems and "tinkering." Some people tell me it's just downright stupid or irresponsible to put my energy into anything else after working so hard to be a good developer.

And yet.

With my digital book by my side in bed, my sleeping mind wandered into the world of Dreaming. In my dream, I was trying to fix an application. My script files weren't loading in, and no matter what I did, my code just wasn't firing right. I could feel my face tighten, my eyebrows scrunching together in an attempt to thwart my Botox avoidance. And then all at once, the world around me had enough.

The house shook. Sustained rumbling and booming filled the room around me. For a moment, I thought we were being bombed.

I stumbled out of bed, raced to my window, and opened the blinds to determine the source of this noise. It was raining. Lightning lit the sky, and the sky collapsed all around it.

September is not typically thunderstorm season here. I opened up my NOAA weather radar app, and sure enough, there it was: a single storm cell inching its way over my house. The only cell in the entire state. I felt like it was there just to save me from my dream.

The sky rumbled again. 

"Where is she?" the sky demanded. "Where is the little girl who dreamed of dragons? Release her from your mind-prison and stop destroying yourself with the rules of logic and money in both your waking and dream lives!"

I made my way to my son's room. He was fast asleep. The thunder didn't even register on his peaceful face. My heart rate slowed, and I returned to bed, grateful to have been released from my stress dream.

I drifted back to sleep, determined to make more space for my creative mind and to find another portal to that Other Life that felt just as vivid as this one.

Cosmosesque - Saturn's Hexagon

Saturn was the first really cool thing I saw in a telescope. In the 6th grade, Colorado public school students spend a week at "outdoor lab." We hike and make dream catchers (because you always make dream catchers) and learn a thing or two about nature.

One night, we had an astronomy session. The lecturer had a decent-sized telescope and offered to show us Saturn. I was expecting to see a fuzzy dot. What I saw literally brought me to my knees.

I was looking at a whole planet. With my own eyes. And I could tell it wasn't a tiny little thing. I saw the shadows that the planet's sphere cast across its rings. My whole perspective shifted in that one moment. I felt tiny. I became aware of that planet going around the sun, of our planet doing the same. I felt the earth spin beneath me. It made me dizzy and I stumbled to the ground.

I can't offer that same experience here, but I can show you something cool. This is Saturn's hexagonal storm. Its a hexagon! It's real and it's cool and it's over 20,000 miles across! It's been around for as long as we have been taking high resolution pictures of Saturn- probably a lot longer. Rings and a hexagon hat? Saturn rocks some awesome geometry bling!

saturn_day1-2

Extras Gig #4: The Office, Part 3

"What's up, Avatar?" "Not much, Craig Robinson, good friend! How are you today?"*

*imaginary response, actual response was a stupid grin and probably my face turning a million shades of red.

The coolest thing about working on this set was getting a nickname from Craig Robinson. He's a really good pool player. I think hearing that there were "pool experts" around intrigued him. He kept challenging us to play. The ADs scolded him (gently- extras get yelled at for breaking the cast/extras boundary, cast members get a gentle reminder that such intermingling is less than ideal).

I ignored the requests from Craig anyway, being the pool playing fraud that I was. So why did he call me Avatar? Well, as I have said before, being an extra is 10% fun and 90% boring as hell. It's important to bring things to do. At the time, I was kind of into Avatar (which is also the link to click if you have no idea what I am talking about right now and would like to read part 1 of this story). I was working on a sketch while he was playing pool:

He stopped his game to compliment the drawing, talk sci-fi, and suddenly I had a nickname. Gush.

The pool expert thing intrigued the whole cast, actually. John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer finally broke down on the third day and just flat out asked, "are you guys really pool experts? It says on our call sheets that you are. It seems crazy that you aren't actually playing pool and they just have you standing around all day." It was nice to joke and chat with them. Then we had to shoot again and we went back to being invisible, despite standing next to one another. Hollywood is weird. This whole experience really underscored that.

Take, for example, lunch. Lunch on this set was even more amazing than breakfast. Food was custom-made. Want steak? No problem. Vegan? There are actual options for you. Dessert? How about bananas foster, flambéd before your very eyes. Anything you want, it's yours. Just don't sit at the wrong table. Which I did.

Being a bit of an introvert, I picked the table that had the fewest people. There were even a couple of kids there. I said hi to one of them. She was sweet. Her mother gave me a look of derision coupled with an awkward and confused smile. A lot of people were giving me a similar look. I felt like a jerk for being nice, so I just focused on my meal and went back to my Avatar sketch.

Later, I found out that "mom" was Angela Kinsey and I was sitting at the table reserved for the cast. Oops. That's what I get for not being a regular watcher of the show. I was also told that some of the confusion might have been due to the fact that with blondish hair (which I had at the time), I look a bit like Jenna Fischer. Maybe someone thought I was a distant relative visiting the set? Of course, if someone had just told me that the table was reserved for the cast, much awkwardness could have been avoided...

For this reason, Craig's no-bullshit acknowledgements that we were actually people in the actual world made him super cool in my eyes.

Despite the awkward moments, I had so much fun on this set. My fellow pool expert extras were all really interesting people. There was a perfect balance of quiet time to read, draw, reflect, explore, etc. and active time to talk and play. Between takes, I chatted with the tech crew (always a little more accessible and willing to talk than the cast). They shot on three cameras simultaneously and did about a million different takes to give the cast (particularly Steve Carell) the chance to improvise a little. I learned a lot.

And also pitied the poor editors who had to go through all of that footage. Yikes.

When it was time to wrap everything up, I actually got a little emotional. Couldn't I just make a livable wage doing this for like a year or something? Later, I wrote a short story about a girl who lived on a studio lot. She dressed from the costume department, grabbed food from the crafty tables, slept on the stunt mats and because she was "no one," she went completely unnoticed and got to be involved in a cool mystery. Sometimes it's good being no one...

Maybe I will post the story here some day.

I ended up being on screen a lot from that shoot. Good food, good people, funny stories, fun work, fun show, fun episode, my face on TV, memories... really, I didn't see how I could top this, given my previous "background actor" experiences. I decided to hang up my background acting hat and do things that made money (part of my fantasy story above was influenced by the insane cost of living in Los Angeles) and was on a more appropriate path to my career goals.

Yes, I was done with extra work. An interesting time in my life, to be sure. I would be happy not being part of that world ever again.

Then a year later, Central Casting called me and asked if I would be willing to work on Mad Men...

Extras Gig #4: The Office, Part 2

(Go to Part 1) Wow. I never noticed how nice his eyes are. Funny how the camera can miss so much. He has really pretty eyes. Really pretty eyes that are... waiting. Maybe I should say something.

"Hello." I replied. He smiled in return.

Steve Carell and I spent what felt like an hour locked in an awkward, courteous gaze. Both of us smiled and nodded.

"So..." He said, trailing off and looking around.

Oh! He's as embarrassed as I am. Heh. He's blushing. I probably am too. This is cool! We're both blushing and confused! Wait. Actually it's just incredibly awkward. I should say something nice to end this.

"I'm... waiting for the bathroom." Brilliant. That will leave a lasting impression.

"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry! I thought... They said..." Just then, the 2nd AD rounded the corner.

Second ADs hate extras. We are constantly over-complicating things. Many of us are either vying for that extra little bit of screen time, trying to get a celebrity autograph (or worse), desperate to "prove" how much we "know" about their job, or begging for a SAG voucher. I've had that job. I can seriously relate. I'm sure this didn't look good.

"Sorry, Mr. Carell," he said. "Hair and makeup is through here." He gently guided Steve into the next room. Steve gave me a shrug and a smile, the 2nd AD gave me the "I'll deal with you later" look. He never did. I didn't get a SAG voucher, either. Steve didn't even say goodbye. After all we shared.

A woman left the bathroom right as the commotion was winding down. She looked into the room and then back at me with the "was a celebrity just here?" look. It's a great look. For a moment, you are elevated to celebrity status by proximity. I call it proxi-lebrity status. Or maybe celemity status? Vote in the comments below.

A bit of Hollywood advice: if you achieve proxi-lebrity status, try to keep a level head about it. "I saw Johnny Depp in line at Starbucks" is interesting blog fodder (and awesome), but it's not an appropriate answer to "how's that entertainment career coming along?" Geek out about it, for sure. I'll geek out with you. Just remember you still have work to do. Occupying the same space as another person is not actually an accomplishment. Unless you are literally occupying the same space as another person. That might get you a Nobel Prize. Though even that could just be an accidental slip into another dimension or a transporter malfunction. I digress. A lot.

After that excitement, they finally called the pool experts to the set. As I walked down the winding staircase, I couldn't help but notice a noise that sounded like a large fan. I am presenting it like was a minor thing, but it was actually deafening. It sounded like a wind tunnel. It only came on between takes. Obviously, I had to ask what it was.

"It's an indoor skydiving thing." Some PA at the base of the stairs was responsible for communicating between the set and the noise. That answer raised more questions than it answered, so I asked if I could take a look.

What sounded like a wind tunnel was actually a wind tunnel. A giant fan blew people up, suspending them in midair while giving the illusion that they were falling. So yeah. Guess what I did for my birthday later that year?

Yeah, baby!

The PAs paraded us through the crowd of very tired half annoyed/half intrigued extras. We took our spots and were given the rundown. The first thing we were told was that the balls were fake. Since actual pool balls make noise, only the stars were allowed to hit them. We had to play with racquet balls lacquered with pool-ball-colored paint.

The actual pool experts were at a total loss and understandably disappointed. Rubber balls flew everywhere for the first several efforts. I just laughed. I went back to the message on the casting hotline. No one doing this job would need to sink shots, do tricks or even make contact with the balls. In fact, the fakers had a much easier time than the experts.

Once we were in place, they brought in the stars.

I have to confess something here: at this point in time, I didn't actually watch The Office. I had seen an episode or two and knew the general storyline and the major characters, but I just couldn't get into the show. I wasn't in love with my job when the show first came out and the last thing I wanted to do was to go home from my real-life awkward office world and watch a fake awkward office world.

I fixed that after this job. I had so much fun on this set! Actually, I probably had a little more fun than I should have...

Extras Gig #4: The Office, Part 1

Part 1? Yeah. I've done this before- broken a long narrative into multiple posts. People appreciate shorter blog posts, or so the blog gurus/content optimization experts say. I'm also really good at cliffhangers.  

That didn't count.

Moving on. I've chronicled my "career" as an extra in a few other posts spanning several years. Want to catch up? First, I explain the process of becoming an extra. Then, my first gig on 100 Questions. (The first of those questions being, "is that an actual show?") After that, I moved on to a chilly night on the set of Cold Case. From there, I had a sadly un-Fillion experience on Castle. I wasn't exactly excited about doing these things anymore. Especially after having been passed as an "Avatar fangirl."

courtney hoskins avatar freak

I was about to give up on it entirely. Until...

One day, I hit the extras jackpot. It wasn't all luck, mind you. Like all big breaks in Hollywood, it took skill, determination, persistence, and a fair amount of lying.

A random call to the casting hotline surprised me when I heard they needed people for The Office. I didn't hold my breath. Popular shows fill up fast. This was a four day shoot, to boot. That's about as long-term as one can get as a TV extra. I actually skipped past the general call, fairly certain all the spots would be filled. I paused, however, when I got to a message asking for extras with a specialized skill set.

Having an unusual skill can get you a featured extra role or a coveted SAG voucher. Alas, I have no facial tattoos, cannot ride a unicycle and my car at the time was the useless color of black (they don't use black cars for background because they distract the eye). I can, however, play pool.

"We need males and females who are pool experts. Please don't submit for this role unless you can sink shots and do tricks." I immediately submitted.

Before you send me a message challenging me to a game, you should know that technically I can do neither of those things. I CAN sink shots. Sometimes. And I can do really neat tricks where balls jump over other balls. Accidentally. This was my best chance at getting on the show, though, so I submitted anyway. I knew that they were not going to get a lot of female applicants. I also knew that they did not actually require pool experts. All I would really need to do was make my blurry shape look like it knew roughly what to do at a pool table.

baby-playing-pool

Of course, this didn't stop me from worrying about it. What if they DID need me to do trick shots? Do I actually hold a cue the right way? Do I lean over the table with the proper form? And then there was the guilt. What if I just took a job away from someone whose ONLY skill set was "pool expert" and here I am, a talentless hack, raking in the fame and money? Oh, right. This is Hollywood.

I was accepted on the spot.

The set was "on location" at Universal Citywalk. My Winter-in-Scranton sweater and the 90 degree "location" weren't the best match. Luckily, all of our scenes were indoors and they had the air conditioning cranked up to "Arctic Front."

Climate control wasn't the only luxury. I meandered over to crafty. Unlike my previous experiences, crafty was not a folding table with a box of assorted chips and a Costco-sized tub of pretzels. The set of The Office was fully catered. I had my choice of drip coffee, tea, espresso or freshly-squeezed orange juice. For food, I could choose from fresh Belgian waffles, made-to-order omelets, granola, yogurt, (gluten free, of course) toasts with jams or peanut butter, bagels with real cream cheese or a variety of fruits. The good ones. This wasn't just soggy melon balls and grapes! This was mango, papaya, kiwi, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and ALSO melon balls and grapes!

It didn't take me long to realize that the "pool experts" were the royalty of extras. (Yes, that's tough to envision when everyone is making minimum wage, but... work with me.) We got to laze around between pool shots because they couldn't risk reusing us in the background. It might destroy the continuity. It also didn't take me long to realize that almost all of us lied about being "pool experts."

All of this made my job a little boring. After several hours of reading and not a single moment on the set, I got a little restless. I wandered over to the restroom. Thwarted by a locked door, I leaned against the wall, stretched my back and started wondering what I would read once I finished my book.

That was when Steve Carell said hello.

A Perfect Sky

I've been a little low key on social media lately. I lost my brother rather suddenly and tragically at the beginning of March and things just haven't felt "right" since then. I wanted to put off Writing Wednesdays until I could write a beautiful and poetic blog post about my brother- how great he was, the circumstances of his death, and the lasting imprint he will have on the lives of the people he touched. I'm not there yet. I might not be there for a long time. I do want to write, though.

Tragedy throws our lives out of balance. I've done a lot of mind work in my life and have dealt with a fair amount of tragedy. It doesn't make sudden loss or struggle easy, but it does help. When a tragedy like this strikes, it's the difference between being thrown off balance while allowing yourself to break down, mourn, cry, etc. and being totally unable to function, submerging and sinking into a sea of depression and anger. Neither reaction will result in my brother coming back to me, but the second reaction is not where I want to be.

I allow myself to be sad, to lean into the emotion and let myself feel what I need to. Doing so actually keeps me from sinking. I try not to indulge in "what if" and "if only" thoughts or do too much superhero fantasizing about going back in time and changing it. I feel and then gently push myself to keep moving.

Whatever emotion we need to feel, we should allow ourselves to feel it. It is what it needs to be. There is no right way to be.

I had this insight when I was about 16: I was driving a friend in my car and she commented that the sky was "perfect." She meant that there were no clouds in it. It was blue from horizon to horizon. I thought on that for a while. Is a cloudless sky perfect? What about a sky with puffy little white clouds? Or one streaked with a rainbow? Or one blazing from the colors of a sunset? What about a sky full of thunderclouds or fog?

rainbow tree

The truth is, all of those are "perfect" skies. The sky is exactly as it needs to be. We are the ones who impose our definitions of "perfect" or even "acceptable" upon something we cannot control. The same can be said about us. If we wait until all of the things we believe make us "perfect" are in alignment, we will wait our entire lives. This is not to say that we shouldn't strive to improve upon ourselves or our situations, just that we should soften our definition of "perfection" and give ourselves a break when we need to feel sad or we don't get the job that we want. This is life. Sometimes it rains.

Test

This is a test of the emergency blogcasting network. Had this been an actual blog post, you would have been riddled with random thoughts and goofy images. This concludes our test.

Baby On Board

(Easily one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons...)

For the past nine months, I have had a baby on board. It's been a wild ride full of ups and downs (thankfully, more ups than downs) and many surprises. This journey is almost at an end. I am standing by for either that first contraction or word from my doctor that she needs to induce, so I decided to write about my experiences to keep from losing my mind...

I get many of the same questions wherever I go. There's the standard "so, what's your major" trio that tends to happen when I am standing in line or waiting in an elevator. They usually come in this order:

1. When are you due?

2. Is it a boy or a girl?

3. Is this your first?

The answers, in order, are April 9th, boy and yes. Usually, after these questions are answered, there is a polite "congratulations." Sometimes this is followed by a bit of advice or an anecdote if the person has their own children. Sometimes these tips are welcome: "being a parent is an amazing experience" or "here is the name of a friend of mine who is an experienced doula." Sometimes they aren't: "say goodbye to your life" or "that's a terrible name- you should pick names from the Bible" (a verbatim quote. Tip: never discuss names with people and never discuss babies with crazy people). Occasionally, the questions are just shocking. "How old are you?" was rude and confusing, particularly since it was asked because I looked "way too young to be having a baby" (only in Los Angeles). "You're not carrying twins? That's a HUGE baby!" almost got a little old lady kicked in the shin. I have had the urge to smack one or two people, but I've yet to do it. That leads me to some of my own little surprises about pregnancy. Maybe these are myths, maybe these aren't, but these are a few of the pregnancy stereotypes that didn't quite fit me:

Pregnant women are crazy. Are they? I've seen so much about the "crazy hormones" that us pregnant women get. I think a lot of it is to make people feel better about being insensitive assholes. Typically on an internet Q&A forum:

Q: HELP!! My wife/girlfriend got angry at me and says I never help around the house but I totally did the dishes once last week! She used to be so happy and carefree and let me do whatever I wanted and made me sandwiches all the time. What is going on?!

A: Relax, bro! It's just hormones. Women just go inexplicably crazy when they are pregnant. It's for sure nothing you are doing.

I only had four real emotional breakdowns and they all had VERY valid reasons, one of which included being in my third week of fighting a terrible virus while simultaneously being 9 months pregnant and unable to take most medications, lie in a comfortable position or sleep. At all. Between coughing fits, I was pummeled with tiny fists and feet begging "why are you shaking my house so much, mom?!" I felt terrible because I was horribly sick, but also filled with guilt whenever I would cough, sneeze or blow my nose. I was terrified of going into labor in such a state. I was... quite justifiably... a little emotional. Nah. I'm sure it was just hormones and I was probably just upset about getting fat or whatever...

I do admit that my BS tolerance levels are at an all-time low, but I don't attribute this to "crazy hormones." It's not comfortable being pregnant and it never lets up. You are building a new person 24/7 for nine months and you're already not getting your usual amount of sleep. You need help. You're nervous, excited, scared, responsible for every step of that little human's growth and in a great deal of physical discomfort. You can't have a glass of wine to unwind and I sure didn't get to do any of my usual "stress busting" activities (see photos, below).  Hormones were the least of my concerns. Sure, there was the occasional "silly" tear shed for pet food commercials and at movies that weren't tragically sad, but hey, if you don't cry during that Sarah McLaughlin Humane Society commercial, you probably don't have a soul.

Those tears fell LONG before I was pregnant! Which leads me to my next myth:

Pregnant women have wild food cravings. No again. This was another of those FAQs for which I never had a satisfying answer for anyone. Yeah, I love potato chips with a jalapeno pepper slice and dipped in ranch dressing, but I created that little concoction years ago. I had a woman approach me in the grocery store when I was buying ice cream: "Wow! Do pregnant women seriously crave ice cream?" Well, sure. But, uh... do you not? (By the way, being pregnant is apparently like wearing a giant sign that says "PLEASE APPROACH ME AND START A CONVERSATION!") I probably ate more peanut butter than usual, but otherwise, my diet was pretty much the same. The only exception was my miserable first trimester. That was the only time I had real food aversions. I could not abide chicken. I couldn't eat it, smell it, look at it or even think about it without feeling ill. Most of the foods I craved at that time were either starchy (bagels) or sugary (lots of fruit- especially mango and watermelon). I didn't ever wake my boyfriend up in the middle of the night and insist he go get me Pad Thai with a side of chocolate cupcakes and pickle juice. Most of these food preferences were less about a "craving" and more about wanting to eat something that wouldn't make me feel sick to my stomach. Which leads nicely to:

Morning sickness is bullshit. I don't mean that it doesn't happen, I mean that "morning sickness" is cruelly misnamed. My nausea usually came at night, right about as I was leaving work. It came off and on throughout most of the day, as well. It was paralyzing. The worst part is, I didn't actually get sick, I just felt like I was constantly on the verge of getting sick. Though I will admit, hearing about Kate Middleton's horrible affliction made me complain a little less. Because these symptoms lasted weeks and came rather randomly, I couldn't really take time off of work, but I had to cease most of the activities I normally would have been able to do in that first trimester. Most notably, this:

And this:

And this:

Sigh... I know I will get to do these things again, but I have really missed them over the past nine months.

We live in an advanced society and people aren't weird about pregnancy anymore.Um. No. I've had all sorts of obstacles to overcome with this. I've dealt with loads of outright discrimination and this strange mix of over and under-reaction to my physical activities. I have had to explain to people how my baby is not- even by scientific definition- a "parasite."  Yes, there were people (coworkers, even) referring to him that way. Even if you WANT to make that argument, don't make it to a pregnant woman whose feelings about her own pregnancy you do not know. It's not clever or cute. I had one guy at work get outright angry at me because after a meeting, some of my coworkers lingered to ask me questions about my (newly announced) pregnancy. As our meeting was clearing out, this guy barked, "come on! We have to do a conference call in here in ten minutes and you girls are over there talking about PREGNANCY!" I guess us "girls" don't get that you need a solid ten minutes of no lady talk before a room is fit for a conference call. Also, for the people who are "grossed out" by pregnancy: you were once a fetus too. Grow the eff up. Yeah, it's not always pleasant and it's sometimes gross, but I don't need you explaining why it's okay for you to be offensive and make me feel like I should be hidden under a tent. Oh, and while we are at it:

I don't have a clue what I am doing. Apparently. I've never read a book on pregnancy. Never looked it up online (what is Google?) I don't have a doctor I can talk to. I have no maternal instincts. I've never even known anyone else in my entire life who has been pregnant and can tell me things about pregnancy (e.g. my own mother). I am SO HAPPY you know everything about my "condition," person I hardly know! Please enlighten me. One woman tracked my every movement every day: Did I know I couldn't eat feta? I should probably sell my cat because of her litter box? I should probably leave my boyfriend because he will be just like her ex husband? My showers are too hot? No wait... too cold? I should see my doctor more often? I shouldn't get my hair dyed? I shouldn't drink coffee? I should eat more, even if it doesn't seem appetizing? I wish it ended there, but this woman had me wondering if I should just quarantine myself. As if it's not stressful enough that so much of the information out there is conflicting.

It's all by the books. Except the books say different hings. And why in the world are fetuses measured against the size of produce? I suppose it's because us ladies spend so much time doing the grocery shopping and wouldn't be able to envision "golf ball sized" versus "baseball sized" or some other consistent size comparison. But seriously, what the heck? Here is an example of how one baby app sizes up my growing kid:

Week 4: poppyseed. Okay. Yeah, I got that. He's tiny.

Week 5: appleseed. Yep. I can see that.

Week 6: pea. Again. Pretty consistent. He's pea sized. Got it.

Week 7: blueberry. Um... wait. I just grabbed a handful. Some are smaller than peas. I don't...

Week 8: raspberry. Okay? Is he not growing?

Let's jump ahead to week 11: lime. Okay. That's bigger than a raspberry. Got it.

Week 12: plum. Week 13: peach. Wait wait. Are we talking about organic fruit or...? Son of a bitch. I give up. Right now, I am at week 39: watermelon. Well, hell! THAT'S gonna hurt:

Next week, I will be at week 40: jackfruit. Whatever the f*&$ that is. Why do I even want to envision him as something edible anyway? Maybe that's why people dress their babies as food for Halloween.

I'll get by with a little help from my friends. This one is true. My friends have really been there for me. Sure, there were a couple who shunned me (pregnancy is not contagious, you know) and acted like my professional and social lives were over, but by and large, my real friends and family came through for me. Sometimes the love was almost overwhelming, but for those of you who have been checking in on me, inviting me to hang out, reminding me that I can ask you for help, driving me to my appointments when needed, cooking me food: you are all wonderful and I love each and every one of you. You kept me sane and happy. Which leads me to my final point:

Pregnant women are smug. Hmm. I was feeling a lot of things: tired, happy, sad, brooding, worried, alone, scared, overwhelmed, gassy, bloated, lazy... Sorry Garfunkel and Oates, but smug just wasn't one of them!

A Piece of the Pi

This shot took me DAYS to set up and render. I made it for my demo reel so I could get a job at Rhythm + Hues in 2006.

R+H created Babe, Richard Parker from Life of Pi, Aslan, the Geiko gecko and countless other memorable CG characters. They recently filed for bankruptcy (a disturbing trend amongst VFX houses lately). Pi won best VFX tonight and when the rep started thanking R+H, they not only played him off stage, but they muted his mic. R+H got no mention from the cinematographer (who, let's face it, owes many of his gorgeous "shots" to the VFX) to even the director, who only expressed that he wished VFX could be cheaper.

People are under the impression that CGI requires nothing more than a button press. Computers are a tool, just like a pen, but it still takes real artists to pull it all off. I spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours learning these skills and I consider myself to be nowhere near the caliber of the people who pulled off Life of Pi. I struggled to find work when I moved out here and was SHOCKED at what people were willing to pay. Luckily, I had other skills to fall back on, but I miss this work and would like to think that I could someday return to it AND support my family. And for my friends who are struggling to find that balance, I hope it gets better. Without the VFX artists, many of the most profitable movies would be nothing more than a couple of actors standing in front of a green screen. I hope to see a reverse in this trend and respect to the artist.

Since I couldn't show up in person to stand with the artists, I have to settle for making a point via the internets: https://www.facebook.com/VfxSolidarityIntl and @VFXSoldier on Twitter are two great sources of more information.

Science and Television

Ah, Futurama! One of the few things on television that actually fact checks their science references... and takes great pleasure in ripping apart things that don't.

The recent meteor event in Russia has made me wish that newscasters and blog writers had Morbo sitting next to them whenever they made some lame joke or speculation about some scientific phenomenon.

I suppose the news stopped being objective and checking their facts a long time ago, and about more than just science, but the confidence with which newscasters and writers present their scientific "facts" really irritates me.

I don't claim to be a science expert, but it is a passion of mine. I studied astronomy and physics for a while and almost made a career out of it. You don't have to get that far into science, though, to know how to do a quick cross-referenced Google search. And if you are about to explain some scientific phenomenon to a worried public, you should consult a scientist. Otherwise, you end up saying stupid things like this:

(Please ignore the fact that this video clip is coming from a UFO playlist- it is a very much identified falling object.) First of all "I tracked those meteors..." No you didn't. You simply did a Google search to see if there were any meteor showers that happened to be taking place when the footage was captured. Also, meteors don't actually come from constellations, they just appear to. Constellations are apparent arrangements of stars many light years away, not throwers of fireballs. And while the name "Quadrands Muralis" is obsolete, constellations do not "go extinct." We just decide we don't like them anymore. Then we have "they are often hard to see because the northern sky is usually cloudy." That's right. Clouds like to gather in the north... for... strategic... science purposes. Forget that "The Northern Sky" is relative to where you are standing and... you know what, I'm not even going to dignify that statement with further commenting.

Actually, the women who were joking around were absolutely right! This was, in fact, a Russian rocket body that entered the Earth's atmosphere, broke into pieces and fell to the ground. I suspected it was something like this the first time I saw this footage. First of all, it is moving pretty slowly. Meteors streak and burn up quite a bit faster than this. Secondly, if you compare the colors and the shapes of the fragments to actual man-made objects burning in the atmosphere (sadly, the Columbia footage comes to mind), this what it looks like.

Then the facepalm moment. "I mean you know it all, Tomer. YOU'RE OUR METEOROLOGIST?!" A. Meteorology is not astronomy. B. Please see my comment about "northern clouds." An actual weather scientist should know better.

The reason the recent Russia event reminded me of this was that I am getting sick of every streak of light being attributed to a "meteor shower." I wish the above footage is what a meteor shower looked like! It would make those chilly early morning trips to the mountains so much more exciting than the 10-15 quick streaks you actually end up seeing.

Early reports of the Russian meteor were that it was a meteor shower or even... meteor rain? I'm sure everyone has seen the footage a million times at this point, but here it is again:

Okay, some quick vocabulary (from NASA):

Asteroid: A relatively small, inactive, rocky body orbiting the Sun.

Comet: A relatively small, at times active, object whose ices can vaporize in sunlight forming an atmosphere (coma) of dust and gas and, sometimes, a tail of dust and/or gas.

Meteoroid: A small particle from a comet or asteroid orbiting the Sun.

Meteor: The light phenomena which results when a meteoroid enters the Earth's atmosphere and vaporizes; a shooting star.

Meteorite: A meteoroid that survives its passage through the Earth's atmosphere and lands upon the Earth's surface.

So, an asteroid or a meteoroid enters the Earth's atmosphere where it become a meteor. It either burns up or it makes it to the surface as a meteorite. OR in the case of the Russian event, it's a bolide, or fireball or in this particular case, a "detonating fireball."

Pretty cool, right? Contrast that with a meteor shower. Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through clouds of debris from comets. Yes, you can have all of that excitement in a meteor shower, but usually what you have is tiny streaks across the sky over several hours. Still cool, but not quite as spectacular as either of the two videos above. They are also global events (you can't have a Russian meteor shower, for example) and come like clockwork every year- not just randomly.

And meteor rain? That... doesn't exist, actually. At least, not in scientific terms.

So the next time a newscaster attributes some weird thing in the sky to a meteor shower, I want Morbo there to tell them:

Extras Gig #3: Castle

A while back I thought it would be a good idea to chronicle some of my extras gigs in my blog. Then all the social networks, my day job as a web developer and my film making and screenwriting efforts made maintaining my website seem more like a chore than the fun thing I used to do. This is a return to that. I'm not going to make the promise that I will regularly update (a promise that I will inevitably break), but I would like to get back in the habit.

As for extras work, it was a super fun thing I did when I first moved out to Los Angeles and could afford to fart around before getting down to business. I don't mean to diminish the life of the full-time professional extra. It's actually a tough way to make money and if you can do it regularly, you are magic and I salute you. Yes, it's quite possible to make your living being a "blur" as people will so kindly refer to them (hey, ninjas are blurs too, and NO ONE messes with ninjas), but I had other aspirations and other obligations. Sadly, my blur days are becoming just that... So I want to write about them before they are gone.

My first gig was 100 Questions. A very short-lived sitcom on... some network. I don't think my scene ever made it onto the small screen, but I basically had to sit in a pants suit and fake sip a fake martini. I've already written that story. I've also already written the Cold Case story, so you can catch up on those if you so desire.

My third extras gig was Castle. NOW we're talking! Though I don't watch it regularly, I do enjoy the show- especially the Nathan Fillion part of the show- so I was excited when they told me I would be in it. They informed me that I would be a New York subway patron. Sweet! I can play that! I lived in New York for almost four years. I know from ridin' the subway, yo! I decided to go method for this one.

On that note, one thing you should know, should you desire to be an extra or find yourself on set one day: background work is NOT acting. No one appreciates your efforts to stand out. You are "background talent." Your goal is to blend in (see earlier ninja comment). Also, no one on the set really wants to hear about all of the acting you do, the workshops and schools you attended, the people you have met... Actually, scratch that. Some people do want to hear about that. And they are sitting at that table over there. Not at my table, where I am clearly trying to read American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Yes, I was being crabby on the set that night. It took far too long for me to find parking and meander through the trailers to find the 2nd AD. Plus, this was a night shoot and I'd heard rumors that we might not get done until four in the morning. There was also limited food for my then-vegetarian self to eat and I was starving. Knowing every eatery nearby would be closing soon and I would be reduced to eating chips and fruit snacks for the next six hours filled me with dread. On top of that, I found out that the scene we were shooting would have NOTHING TO DO with Nathan Fillion. At all. I have this annoying curse of being where he is- sometimes EXACTLY where he is- and never getting to see or meet him. More on that later.

While I was sitting at one of the few tables that had adequate reading light and feeling sorry for my(let's face it, pretty spoiled)self, I got a call. When I answered it, the voice of my dad's partner answered back and I suddenly got very nervous. Don't get me wrong, we get along great and I love talking to her, but it was a bit odd to get a call from her late at night, knowing that it was three hours later where she was. As it turns out, I had reason to be nervous. My dad had suffered a heart attack. Now, I do love suspense, but not where my family is concerned, so let me just spoil this and spare you: he's fine. Everything turned out great. However, that information would not come to light for another few weeks and the rest of my time on set was spent worrying about him.

I felt trapped. He would need a surgery and I wanted to fly out for it, but I was unable to do anything about it. I alternated between distracting myself with my book and researching flights on my ten-percent-battery-life phone. I decided the best thing for me to do would be to just finish out the night and go home. Needless to say, much of the evening was a bit of a blur after that. I remember walking with my book, trying to look like a New Yorker. I was depressed and self-occupied, so I think I pulled it off quite nicely.

The one detail I do remember from the night is that I was selected to be one of the subway patrons who would go through the turnstile right as the bad guy jumped over to escape Beckett. Since my face would be in the shot, I had to pretend like I noticed, but not really care. Much like I would have reacted in New York had I seen someone jump over the turnstile. The turnstiles the actors were to jump over were very clearly marked with tape. We were told that we could go through any of the other turnstiles, but that we had to stay out of the way of the marked turnstiles.

When the first take came up, I found an unmarked turnstile and set my intention to walk through it. I headed toward it (without looking like I'm heading toward it) and BOOM, the bad guy jumps over the unmarked turnstile. Any look of shock I had as this actor came hurtling at me uncontrollably was completely genuine. They called a cut. No one blamed anyone (mostly because it wasn't my fault... they have no problem yelling at extras, but tend to hold back with the talent), but I was much more cautious about approaching the turnstiles on subsequent takes. I mean, I would love to be a stuntwoman, but that's a completely different pay grade with a totally different set of rules and insurance requirements.

I did manage to make it in the shot, at least- see above picture. This was season 2, episode 18. I'm that blur that looks kind of like... well a rather gothy New Yorker. And see that green blur? That's my copy of American Gods (that book really did help me get through that shoot).

I was later used in three other shots, but never made it onto the screen. It's pretty amazing. With the exception of two people veryone you see on the screen was an extra or a stunt person. Some of them got paid more than others. I got paid about $80 to be there that night, and I was on the lower end of that price range so... do the math. It's expensive to put bodies in scenes!